


The Way Things Are

by FrameofMind



Series: The Things Cycle [1]
Category: Johnny's Entertainment, KAT-TUN (Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-04
Updated: 2013-10-04
Packaged: 2017-12-28 09:49:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/990615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrameofMind/pseuds/FrameofMind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jin is back from the U.S. with a successful tour under his belt and a freshly minted contract with Warner. Kame is happy for him. Really.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Way Things Are

**Author's Note:**

> **Title:** The Way Things Are  
>  **Author:** FrameofMind  
>  **Pairing:** Akame  
>  **Rating:** R  
>  **Genre:** Romance/General  
>  **Word Count:** ~10,000 (One-shot)  
>  **Disclaimer:** This is a work of fiction. It would be amazing if I’ve somehow guessed all of this right, but I highly doubt that…  
>  **Summary:** Jin is back from the U.S. with a successful tour under his belt and a freshly minted contract with Warner. Kame is happy for him. Really.  
>  **Author’s Note:** My first official Akame fic. Not new to writing, but I’m quite new to the JE-verse, so you’ll have to forgive any newbie mistakes. Yoroshiku! (*salutes*) This fic takes place in January 2011…

**The Way Things Are**  
  
Kame knows he’s sulking.  
  
It’s not like he’s doing it on purpose. Nobody forced him to come here, he knows that. He could leave any time he wants to, he knows that too. And he didn’t come here to sulk and make trouble—he came here because it seemed like a good thing to do. The grownup thing to do. Because really there’s nothing to sulk about, not anymore, now that it’s all water under the bridge, and that’s what grownups do—they build bridges. Instead of burning them.  
  
He swirls his ice around in his empty glass, tilts the glass up to his lips and lets one shrunken square sliver of ice in. Pushes it around with his tongue until it’s sitting between his cheek and his teeth, making his face feel cold.  
  
Looks like a good party, anyway. Most people seem to be having a good time.  
  
Ryo was the one who rented out the club, but the decorations have Yamapi’s fingerprints all over them. There’s one wall over by the bar that’s plastered with poster-sized photographs of Jin’s face—mostly just the most awkward and embarrassing of the press-released shots from the past fifteen years of his career, but a few of them look like ordinary candids. Kame can’t help wondering if Yamapi cleared those with the agency. Not that this is exactly a public party, but still, there’s got to be sixty to a hundred people here at least, and not all of them are Johnnys.  
  
One of the old press photos shows Jin with horrifically blonde hair that makes his face look positively ghostly in the yellow light. A familiar skinny arm is visible around his shoulder, but the person it belongs to has been cropped out.  
  
Kame bites down on the ice cube, skull shuddering with the satisfying crunch.  
  
There’s music filling the room, but it’s nothing he recognizes. He thinks it’s in English, but it’s hard to tell—even if he spoke English, he didn’t think he’d be able to make out the words over the heavy beat. People are dancing over at the far end of the room, nearest the speakers, while others are crowded around the sea of tables between the bar and the dance floor. Kame watches as one of Jin’s American friends whose name Kame has forgotten climbs drunkenly onto a table near the edge and starts dancing there too. The barbarians breeching the citadel.  
  
It’s an odd thought, because Kame likes dancing. He always has. Even drunk dancing, sometimes. He likes drunk singing too. It’s relaxing to not have to care if he sounds good or looks good, not have to calculate just the right moment to wink or tear his shirt off in order to draw the maximum reaction from the crowd. But right now he thinks he’s never felt less like dancing in his entire life, drunkenly or otherwise. Right now, it sounds like work.  
  
He shakes his glass to inspect its remaining contents, tilts it up again and takes in another ice cube, crunching it between his teeth. The sound almost drowns out the music.  
  
There’s a big crowd just right of center among the tables. It’s hard to see what they’re all clambering about, or even who’s there, though Kame can make out several women in tight tops and short skirts who have mysteriously ended up in the middle somewhere. Not that they seem unhappy with the arrangement. A tall figure in aviators and a herringbone fedora tilted obnoxiously on his dark, messy hair punches the air and howls when one of the women climbs onto the table for some reason, and Kame rolls his eyes.  
  
He’s pretty sure the fedora isn’t actually Jin’s—he saw one of the other guys wearing it an hour ago—but the sunglasses are unmistakable. He feels like he’s seen Jin’s sunglasses more than his eyes for about the last two years, even back when they were still actually working together.  
  
When someone passes a bottle of tequila and a handful of shot glasses toward the center of the crowd, and the women stretches out on the table to be adorned, Kame looks away. This is really not helping with the whole not-sulking plan.  
  
He swirls the ice in his glass again, listening to the soft clattering sound over the music blaring from the other end of the club. He’s almost tempted to have another drink, but he’s already starting to feel a buzz from the last one, and he figures he’d better not risk it. With the weird mood he’s in right now, he might end up saying or doing something he’d regret, and that would be a stupid price to pay just to feel more at ease in the short term.  
  
“Hey.”  
  
Kame gives a start, but covers it with what he hopes is an easy smile. “Hey,” he says, nodding back at Yamapi. “Nice party,” he adds, glancing out over the room again, because that’s what you’re supposed to say when someone invites you to a party that you probably really have no business being at, all things considered. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Jin snag a shot glass off of the naked belly of the woman with his teeth and arch upwards, downing the contents to raucous cheers.  
  
“Thanks,” Yamapi shrugs. He’s not smirking or looking askance at him, not really, but somehow Kame gets the feeling he can see straight through him anyway. Because he probably can.  
  
Kame shoves a hand in his pocket, tries to put on his grownup face. “You been busy lately?”  
  
“Not really,” Yamapi says. “Kind of between things right now. It’ll get bad again in a month or so though.”  
  
“Lucky,” Kame says, raising his glass as if to take a casual sip before remembering that it’s empty. He drops his hand to his side again.  
  
He sees Yamapi watching him out of the corner of his eye, but he doesn’t look at him. Yamapi doesn’t comment. “How about you?”  
  
“Sort of,” Kame nods, shifting back on his heels. “Studio recordings, mostly.”  
  
“That’s nice. I like days when I can go to work in my pajamas.”  
  
Kame grins a little in spite of himself. “Yeah, the other guys don’t like it so much when I do that.”  
  
“Well then maybe you should go solo.”  
  
Kame gives him a sharp look, but Yamapi just keeps surveying the crowd, as if he hasn’t noticed what he’s said. Kame knows better.  
  
“Group work’s not for everyone,” Yamapi adds. He still doesn’t look at Kame, but his tone softens pointedly.  
  
Kame glares down at the contents of his glass, which is mostly water now, with just a few small fragments of ice. “I know that,” he says.  
  
Yamapi nods firmly, as if something is settled, and claps Kame on the shoulder in that exaggeratedly patronizing way of his, and Kame wants to shrug him off, but he doesn’t. Because he’s being a grownup today.  
  
When Yamapi disappears again, saying something about hunting up a fresh bottle of tequila for the guest of honor, Kame wanders away toward the far end of the bar. He doesn’t want another drink, but he wants something to occupy his hands, so he orders a Coke with lime and decides to pretend it’s got vodka in it.  
  
He ends up in a conversation with a couple of actresses, one of whom had a bit part in an episode of Gokusen and remembers meeting him over the catering table, but who doesn’t get pouty when he has to admit he’s forgotten, which he thinks is nice. They start out comparing notes on recent projects and end up in a heated debate over which studios have the best restroom facilities—the woman who was in Gokusen is partial to one which she swears had a massage chair in the corner of the women’s lounge, but her friend is skeptical. Somehow this puts them on the subject of multi-purpose furniture, and Kame decides his ideal coffee table would include a laundry chute, because then he could take his socks off while he’s watching baseball and drop them directly into the hamper. By the time the conversation fades and the two women decide they’d better get going, Kame realizes that most of the party has decided the same thing.  
  
There are a few remaining stragglers teetering on the dance floor, and one or two couples still making out in the corners of the lounge area near the bar, but other than that it’s just the core group slumped around a couple of tables near the center. The body-shot girls are gone, and Kame thinks one or two of the guys have probably gone with them. Even Yamapi has disappeared.  
  
Jin is still here though.  
  
Kame’s barely said a word to him since he arrived. Not like Jin tried very hard to find him—not like Kame expected him to. Jin gave him an awkward wave from about five feet away when Kame first appeared, and then he was dragged off by some blond guy in an Aerosmith t-shirt, and that was the extent of their interaction for the evening.  
  
He feels a little stupid for staying here so long. He wants to tell himself he was having fun, he got into a nice conversation and the time just got away from him—but that still doesn’t explain the two hours before that that he spend sulking and not wanting to be there and being there anyway.  
  
He should at least go over and say something. Congratulations, maybe. Welcome back.  
  
Okay, maybe not that.  
  
He leaves his last empty soda glass on the bar and walks over toward the table, sliding his hands into the back pockets of his jeans as he goes. Somebody is saying something in English, and apparently it’s hilarious, because Jin’s head is thrown back and he’s clutching his stomach against peals of drunken laughter. He’s even ditched the sunglasses—they’re sitting on the table in front of him.  
  
“Hey,” Kame says, when Jin’s laughter is on the downswing. Jin blinks up at him for a moment as if he’s not sure who he is, and Kame wants to punch him, except that he reminds himself that Jin has been drinking for about three hours straight, at least. It wouldn’t be surprising if he’d forgotten his own name.  
  
“Kame!” Jin says suddenly, and lurches up from the chair, throwing his arms around Kame’s shoulders and thumping him on the back. Kame stumbles underneath the added weight, floundering a bit. He’s not sure whether this is a drunk thing or an American thing, but it’s weird either way.  
  
Some of the others get up too and start patting him on the back, which is also weird. One of the Americans ruffles his hair and he stifles a glare.  
  
When Jin finally pulls back, Kame has to grab him by the elbow to keep him from toppling over in the other direction.  
  
“Awesome party, right?”  
  
“Yeah,” Kame replies, more concerned with the puddle of spilled liquor Jin’s in danger of slipping on than with the conversation. “Great party. Anyway, I’m about to take off, so I just wanted to say—”  
  
“Hey, you should come with us!” one of the other guys says. He’s Japanese, but Kame doesn’t think he’s ever met him before. “We’re heading to Roppongi.”  
  
“Ah…thanks,” Kame hedges. “Maybe next time.”  
  
“Actually guys, I’m gonna go home too,” Jin says, reaching for his aviators and nearly poking himself in the eye with them as he tries to perch them on top of his head. “I’m about to crash.”  
  
 _No kidding_ , Kame thinks.  
  
“Dude, you okay getting home by yourself? I can go with you,” says one of the others, a guy with a spikey necklace and a very permanent-looking tattoo that says “FUCK” in English letters on his shoulder. So definitely not a Johnny.  
  
“No, man, I’m fine, you guys go have fun,” Jin says, waving them away, and Kame thinks it’s probably a good idea. Some of them look even worse for wear than Jin is. Being discovered by a paparazzo sleeping in the gutter with another guy after failing to find his way home in the dark probably wouldn’t be a great follow-up to Jin’s recent career successes.  
  
Unfortunately, Jin chooses this moment to trip backwards over his chair and land hard on the floor in a giggling mess.  
  
“Seriously, man,” the spikey guy says as Jin slowly finds his way back to his feet, “I’m gonna come with you.”  
  
“It’s okay,” Kame says, and immediately afterwards he wants to sew his own mouth shut, because this was not what he signed up for and it’s  _so_  not his problem. Not anymore.  
  
But it’s out there now, and what the hell. He wanted to be the grownup.  
  
He pastes a smile onto his face. “I’ll make sure he gets home.”  
  
It doesn’t take much to convince them—Kame’s clearly capable, and based on the weird warm welcome earlier it seems at least Jin hasn’t been trashing him to his new friends behind his back. And they all want to go out clubbing anyway, so this is the perfect solution for everybody. Right.  
  
Once Jin is upright again, Kame takes him by the elbow and starts guiding him toward the door, because if he has to play babysitter then at least he wants to get this over with as quickly and painlessly as possible. He’s a little bit startled when Jin throws an arm around his shoulders and leans into him, but then he figures it’s probably for the best. At least he won’t fall down the stairs.  
  
They hail a cab out on the street, and Kame gives the driver Jin’s address. As they pull away from the curb, Jin shifts closer to him on the seat and wraps his arms around Kame’s bicep, resting his head against Kame’s leather jacket like a pillow and swaying bonelessly with each turn. Kame stares down at him. Maybe it really is an American thing. Kame doesn’t remember him being quite like this when he was drunk before. Maybe a little more touchy-feely than usual, but never quite so clingy. And certainly never with him.  
  
He thinks about fishing Jin’s wallet out of his pocket to pay the driver, but that just seems petty, and anyway it’s hard to feel completely annoyed with him when he’s curled up against him like an overgrown pussycat. Even though there’s something about that that makes him angry in itself, like he’s being taken advantage of somehow. But in any case, he pulls a wad of cash from his own wallet and passes it to the front seat, telling the driver to keep the change, and then bundles Jin out of the backseat. This time Kame’s the one who drags Jin’s arm over his shoulder, just because it’s easier that way.  
  
They take the elevator up to the fourth floor and then turn left.  
  
“I like your hair like this,” Jin says, smiling lazily at Kame and nearly steering them into a wall because he’s not watching where his feet are going. He lifts the hand from Kame’s shoulders and fluffs the hair at the back of his head. “It’s fluffy.”  
  
“Thanks,” Kame says, throwing him a sideways glance and wondering if Jin has lost his mind in addition to his sense of balance.  
  
“You look good fluffy. Like a dog.”  
  
Clearly Jin thinks this is a compliment. Kame is tempted to say something scathing about fedoras and sunglasses, but he resists. “Keys,” he says instead as they stumble to a stop outside Jin’s door.  
  
“Right.” Jin fumbles in his pocket for a moment and produces the set, just hands it to Kame without even trying to maneuver them himself.  
  
Kame unlocks the door and they blunder their way inside like some sort of awkward two-headed beast, getting in each other’s way in the genkan while they slip out of their shoes. Jin nearly drags him to the floor when he loses his balance just as Kame is finishing with his second shoe, but he manages to adjust his footing to catch them in time. He’s got both arms around Jin’s middle now, half dragging him toward the couch, and Jin is giggling and saying something about dogs and leashes and not really paying much attention to what they’re trying to accomplish. Finally Kame manages to dump Jin on the couch, but Jin doesn’t quite get the message to let go, so he ends up dragging Kame down half on top of him, Kame’s knees jarring against the floor and his hands trapped under Jin’s dead weight.  
  
Jin just laughs and pets Kame’s hair again, oblivious to his mild glare. He wriggles a bit when Kame tries to work one of his arms free.  
  
“Stop it, that tickles,” Jin pouts.  
  
“I’m just trying—”  
  
Suddenly Jin’s hand goes tight in his hair and he drags him down for a very sloppy kiss.  
  
Kame holds still. His left arm is still trapped, but that’s not why he doesn’t push back. He’s just fallen through a trapdoor into the Twilight Zone—he needs a minute. He’s not responding, but Jin is acting like he is, still kissing him, nibbling at his lips, and Kame wonders what the hell is going on.  
  
“Jin,” he mumbles, trying not to move too much, not to offer any inadvertent invitations. Jin ignores him. “Jin, stop it,” he says a little more firmly, trying to pull his head away. Jin doesn’t let him, and Kame pushes harder. “Stop.”  
  
Finally Jin lets him pull back, just blinks up at him with a weird hazy look in his eyes that makes Kame’s stomach feel a bit wobbly, and Kame can’t tell if it’s drunk or playful or mean or—what the hell is going on here?  
  
“I don’t wanna stop,” Jin says.  
  
And then he drags Kame down again, shoves his tongue in Kame’s mouth. And Kame lets him.  
  
He’s not sure exactly why. He’s not sure he really wants to know. But at least when Jin is kissing him he’s not saying stupid things that make Kame want to punch him in the face. He marvels at Jin’s hands in his hair, the strange little mumbled sounds in the back of Jin’s throat—such a familiar voice, but he’s never heard it like this, wanting and taking in a way that was never for Kame. And Jin tastes good, even soaked in tequila, and he never thought he’d get to find out what Jin tastes like. Because it’s Jin, and they barely even speak anymore, and even when they did speak it was never like this, because that’s just not the way things are.  
  
He should probably feel guilty about that. About this. Because it’s really not. It’s not the way things are. Not when Jin is sober.  
  
He barely notices when Jin’s hand disappears from his hair, skims lightly over his chest, just beneath the open front of his jacket. But when Jin gropes at his burgeoning hard-on through his jeans, he notices.  
  
When Kame gasps and pulls back, Jin’s chuckles lap at his ears. He squeezes a little, smirking up at Kame like he’s won something. “I thought so.”  
  
Kame feels his face get hot, but only a small part of it is embarrassment. So that’s what it is—another stupid game. Doing body shots off the slut. Playing chicken with the fag. If Jin weren’t so drunk, Kame really would punch him.  
  
As it is, he shoves Jin’s hand away and gets to his feet, swipes the back of his wrist across his lower lip. He can still taste him there. “You’re a bastard, Akanishi.” Fuck this. He’s done his good deed for the day.  
  
Jin’s fingers close around his wrist just as he’s about to storm out, his grip surprisingly tight. Kame looks back at him, and there’s something in his eyes that makes him hesitate. Wonder, again. Because Jin’s not laughing anymore.  
  
“Don’t go.” His voice is quiet, and it’s hard to tell if he’s ordering or begging.  
  
Kame glances down at Jin’s hand. He can feel each one of Jin’s fingers pressing into his flesh.  
  
“You’re drunk,” Kame says. “You should go to bed.”  
  
“You should come with me,” Jin says.  
  
Kame frowns at him, trying to figure out if he knows what he’s saying. If he’s still playing games. “You’re really drunk.”  
  
“But you want me anyway,” Jin says. “Bastard.”  
  
Okay, seriously, this needs to stop. Whatever the hell is going on, he can wait until Jin is sober and making sense again to find out. If he bothers to find out at all, because this is crazy, and what difference does it make anyway? Now? He pries Jin’s fingers off of his wrist and turns to leave again.  
  
“Wait!” Jin calls after him, and Kame hears him scrambling to his feet like he’s trying to block the door—but then there’s a smack and a crash, and Kame turns just in time to step out of the way as a framed picture slides down the wall and hits the floor, the glass shattering at his feet.  
  
“Ow,” Jin mumbles. He’s slumped against the wall near the mess, rubbing at his shin where it must have smacked into the coffee table, right before he jarred the picture off the wall.  
  
When Jin nearly puts his palm down on a pile of broken glass as he tries to get up, Kame quickly steps around the danger zone and snatches his arm away, pulling him back the other direction. Jin sort of rolls over, but eventually finds his way to his hands and knees, and then to his feet. “Go sit on the couch,” Kame orders. “I’ll take care of it.”  
  
Once he’s satisfied that Jin won’t go tumbling into the pile of glass again, Kame shrugs out of his jacket and drops it over the arm of a chair on his way to the kitchen. It takes him a few minutes of searching, but eventually he finds a small hand broom and a dustpan. When he comes back out into the living room, Jin is curled up on his side on the couch. He’s taken his own jacket off as well and scrunched it up underneath his head like a pillow. The sunglasses that were on his head are lying on the floor beside the couch.  
  
Kame catches himself looking at him for perhaps a second longer than is wise, but Jin doesn’t notice. He seems a bit lost in thought.  
  
After Kame kneels and starts sweeping up the glass, he realizes that what’s in the frame isn’t a picture—it’s the cover art for “Real Face.” A commemorative certificate from when the single first breached the Million mark. Kame knows because he’s got one just like it sitting in a box somewhere in his storage space. He’s never gotten around to framing it.  
  
It takes him a moment to realize his hands have stopped working. He gets them moving again, carefully sweeping up the largest chunks first, trying not to spread the smaller fragments around too much as he then gently sweeps those up too. He doesn’t look at the picture frame again.  
  
After he’s double-bagged the glass for safety and placed it in the trash can, he washes off the broom and dustpan to get rid of any tiny glass fragments that might be left. Then he puts them back under the sink where he found them.  
  
When he comes back out into the living room, Jin is sitting up again. His jacket is crumpled up on the coffee table and his elbows are resting on his knees, his forehead in his hands. Kame can’t see his face, but he looks a little dizzy, and no wonder.  
  
Kame fiddles with the collar of his own jacket, which is still lying on the armchair. For some reason he’s not quite as anxious to get out of here as he was a few minutes ago. He’s not sure why though. Nothing has changed.  
  
Leaving the leather jacket on the chair, Kame walks around the coffee table to stand beside Jin. Not staying, just…here.  
  
“Are you okay?”  
  
Jin nods.  
  
“Do you want me to go?”  
  
Jin shakes his head.  
  
“Thanks,” Jin says after a long moment. “For the…” He seems to lose his way somewhere, but drops his hands and nods toward the place where this picture is still leaning against the wall.  
  
“No problem,” Kame says. “But…I should probably…”  
  
Jin reaches over and takes hold of his hand. Squeezes a little, and it makes whatever Kame should have said not make sense anymore. He doesn’t tell him not to go this time, but Kame doesn’t anyway. When he tugs a little, Kame sits down on the couch next to him, watching Jin’s profile. Like maybe somehow it will all suddenly make sense.  
  
When Jin looks at him, he’s a little surprised to realize how close they’re sitting. It still doesn’t make sense, but he doesn’t move. When Jin reaches up and brushes his hair away from his face, nearly poking him in the eye in the process, it doesn’t bother him. It still doesn’t make sense, but it doesn’t bother him. When Jin leans in to kiss him again, he doesn’t push him away. Because it doesn’t make sense. If it’s a game, then it doesn’t make sense.  
  
One of Jin’s hands finds its way under Kame’s t-shirt, and he shivers a little, trying too late to suppress it. Kame’s hand drifts up toward Jin’s face, but he thinks better of it, rests it against Jin’s shoulder instead, like he’s ready to push him away the moment this goes wrong. Jin moves in closer, and Kame is suddenly reminded of who’s got the weight advantage here as they go toppling over slightly clumsily onto the couch. Jin’s fumbling makes him a little nervous as he shifts them around, nearly kneeing Kame in the balls at least once—but when he settles against Kame’s hips and drives his tongue into Kame’s mouth, everything else disappears again. His hips give a little roll against Jin’s before he’s even thought to resist, and one of Jin’s hands skates down his side to clutch at his ass, keep him close.  
  
Another involuntary roll of his hips, and that’s when he notices. He’s not the only one who’s hard.  
  
Kame breaks the kiss, blinking up at Jin, confused again, because what the hell is happening? This isn’t supposed to happen, not with Jin.  
  
“Kame,” Jin breathes, oblivious to Kame’s bewilderment as he dips to trail kisses down to the base of Kame’s throat, pushing at the collar of his t-shirt. His breath is hot, his tongue flicking against Kame’s skin, and Kame almost forgets why he was trying to stop him again, because he likes this and he doesn’t want it to stop. His hand is in Jin’s hair, fingers curling as he arches into the warmth, and he doesn’t want it to stop. And then Jin’s other hand is between them, pulling at Kame’s belt, and Jin is moving further down and wait, this is crazy.  
  
“Jin, what are you—” Kame grabs a fistful of Jin’s t-shirt to stop him, and Jin stops, but he doesn’t retreat. Just looks up at him slowly.  
  
“Please?” Jin says, a little breathless, and his eyes have that slightly innocent, slightly hesitant look that makes something in the region of Kame’s chest squeeze a little in a way that’s not even about heat. “I want to.”  
  
And then Kame does something really stupid: He believes him.  
  
Jin doesn’t waste time after Kame’s fingers loosen on his shirt, as if he’s afraid Kame might change his mind. His hands and lips fumble a bit as he tugs at Kame’s belt, slides down Kame’s stomach to settle on the couch between his legs, but he seems to be moving with a purpose, drunken though it is. Kame swallows as Jin undoes his zip, and then wriggles involuntarily when Jin’s warm hand plunges into his pants and closes around his dick. He strokes it a little before dragging him out.  
  
Jin throws him one last look, and Kame knows he should say something, knows he should stop this before it goes too far, it’s  _already_  gone too far, but the reasons keep scattering every time Jin’s hand moves over him, the blood draining from his head, and he can’t put the words together in time.  
  
“Shit,” he breathes as Jin’s mouth closes over him, and it’s all he can do to keep from pulsing his hips into that heat. “Fucking hell…”  
  
It’s so good. Kame’s not even sure when the last time was, he’s lost track, but it must be longer than he thought, because there’s no way this could be so fucking good. Jin is beautiful between his legs, and it’s something he hasn’t even let himself imagine because that’s just asking for trouble. You don’t imagine someone sucking you off when you know you have to face them with a smile at work every other day. And after that was over, there were other reasons, but he’s not sure what those are anymore either because—he gasps and arches when Jin’s tongue swirls around his head just so, sending ripples of pleasure all the way to his toes, making his stomach muscles clench. It’s so  _fucking_  good.  
  
He’s seriously going to regret this in the morning. He almost wishes he’d had that second drink at the party. At least then he’d have more of an excuse.  
  
The heat disappears, and Kame lets out a strained breath, eyes blinking open. He’s not sure when he closed them.  
  
“Cut it out,” Jin grumbles at him, looking downright petulant in his sluggishness. “You’re thinking so loud even I can hear it. Give it up.”  
  
“I—”  
  
But he doesn’t manage any more than that before Jin drops his head to Kame’s cock again and sucks hard, and Kame’s head falls back with a kind of desperate whimper that he doesn’t even recognize. “Fuck, Jin…” he pants, fingers scrabbling at the couch cushions, and this time he can’t help thrusting a little into Jin’s mouth.  
  
Jin’s hands on his hips hold him steady, but he takes him deeper nonetheless, and Kame feels his legs spread a little more of their own accord, his hips straining upwards. His breath is coming hard and fast now as Jin works him over, every nerve in his body alive and tingling, and he bites his lip against a sob when Jin does that swirl thing again.  
  
“Jin,” he rasps, because it’s close, it’s really close, and Jin should know, “I’m gonna—”  
  
But Jin ignores him, just goes deep again, and then another strong suck, Jin’s tongue pressing hard, just  _there_ , and—  
  
He can’t even hear himself over the feeling of his body releasing, everything releasing, hips jerking, limbs shuddering with the force of it. The first thing he feels as he comes back to his senses are Jin’s hands on his hips, Jin’s mouth around him, slowly slipping away over too-sensitive skin, lapping up the last of it.  
  
He feels Jin shift a little, seemingly trying to find his balance on the couch cushions. Then his weight slides down on top of Kame’s leg, his elbow wedging between Kame’s hip and the back of the couch as he half-lies on top of him, his cheek pressed against Kame’s chest.  
  
There are words in his head, but he can’t make sentences out of them. Most of them seem to be followed by question marks. He’s not even sure what he feels right now, much less what he thinks. For a long time they just lie there silently, and Kame can’t tell whether Jin’s waiting for him to say something first, or whether he’s just passed out.  
  
“Kame…” Jin says, his voice a little scratchy. Kame tries not to think too hard about why.  
  
He swallows. “What?”  
  
There’s a moment of hesitation. “I think I’m gonna be sick…”  
  
Kame’s eyes snap open, but Jin’s already stumbling to his knees, nearly falling over the back of the couch as he scrambles for the bathroom.  
  
 _Well that’s not what you want_ , Kame thinks as he stares at the bathroom door, listening to the sound of Jin throwing up an evening’s worth of tequila shooters and…something else.  
  
He glances down at his disheveled state. And then he  _really_  feels like an asshole.  
  
He tucks himself back in and zips up, and then he falls back down against the couch again, kneading the heels of his hands against his eyes as if he could rewind the clock to the beginning of the evening if only he can force his eyeballs through the back of his skull. “Shit,” he mutters. “Shit, shit,  _shit_ …”  
  
Maybe he should have let one of the other guys take Jin home after all. At least one of his drunk straight friends would have pushed him away and told him to fuck off if he’d tried anything. Kame would have liked to think he’d have done that too, because he’s a good guy and he’s responsible like that—but that’s a hard sell in light of recent evidence.  
  
He wonders if he should just leave now. Maybe that would be best. Jin’s definitely not going to want to see him when he sobers up, if he even remembers what’s just happened—and if he doesn’t remember, that’ll be even worse. Easier, but worse. He’s not sure how, but it will.  
  
 _It was Jin’s idea_ , his mind protests.  
  
 _But Jin was drunk off his ass, and he’s an idiot even when he’s sober_ , Kame argues back.  
  
He hears Jin succumb to another wave of violent heaves, and he knows he can’t leave. Because  _that_  would be worse. Even if Jin doesn’t want to see him, he can’t let  _that_  happen and then just leave while the guy is drunk and heaving his guts out and potentially in danger of passing out and choking on his own regurgitated dinner and…something else.  
  
So he stays. He puts all the other stuff aside and rolls to his feet, trying to figure out what a grownup would do in this situation. Ignoring the fact that a grownup wouldn’t let his straight, drunk ex-friend and ex-colleague give him a blow job just because he offered, he wanders off to the kitchen and hunts up a couple of the more ragged dish towels and a plastic bowl that looks like it’s seen better days. He runs two of the dish towels under warm water and wrings them out so that they’re damp but not dripping, and then he takes everything over to the bathroom. He only hesitates a moment before he knocks on the door.  
  
“Jin, are you okay?”  
  
The noises have stopped, but Jin doesn’t answer. Not out loud, anyway.  
  
“I’m coming in, okay?” Kame says. He waits another moment just to give Jin enough time to stop him if he wants to, and then he pushes in, glad to find the door unlocked.  
  
Jin is curled up on the floor beside the toilet looking tired and disoriented, but not dead, which is good. The mess could be worse too. Kame tidies Jin up first, wipes his face, encourages him to sit up and helps him out of his t-shirt. He thinks about trying to get him out of his jeans too, but all things considered he’s a little worried that might be misconstrued, and they’re not dirty or anything, so he leaves them alone. Then he lets Jin lie down again on the fuzzy bathmat while he cleans up elsewhere. When Jin scrambles for the toilet again, Kame dives out of the way, but stays close, holding Jin’s long hair back from his face. They’re dry heaves at this point, but just in case.  
  
When Jin crawls back down to lie on the bathmat again, Kame brushes his hair back and dabs at his face with a clean warm cloth, just to wipe away the sweat. Then he settles himself on the floor and leans back against the cabinet, just keeping an eye on him for signs of distress.  
  
He doesn’t think about what happened before, because it makes him feel a little queasy himself. He wishes he could take it back, but at the same time he doesn’t want to. And he’s not sure why that is, but he’s pretty sure it makes him a horrible person. Probably.  
  
After a half an hour or so, Kame is reasonably convinced that the heaves have stopped. He helps Jin to his feet, grabs the plastic bowl with his free hand, and slowly steers them around into the bedroom. While he’s putting the plastic bowl down on the nightstand, Jin seems to get the message and slips out of his jeans, then crawls under the covers in just his boxers. Kame circles around to the other side of the bed, near the windows, and picks up the pillow that Jin accidentally shoved off the mattress, reaching over to help slide it under Jin’s head.  
  
When he turns away, Jin gropes for him again. He doesn’t even manage to grasp his whole hand, just the first two fingers, but he holds on tight.  
  
“Do you still hate me?”  
  
Jin’s eyes are closed, his face pressed half into the pillow. Kame would have thought he was asleep if it weren’t for the strength of his grip. His voice sounds a few sizes too small for him, like it did when they were kids.  
  
Kame looks at Jin’s face for a long time. The soft curve of his jaw. The slightly pouty lips that Kame knows Jin hates. They look even more pouty when he’s frowning into his pillow like that, a few tendrils of damp hair stuck to his cheek and forehead.  
  
“I never hated you,” Kame says.  
  
Jin doesn’t say anything. His muffled breaths are short but slow, a lazy, drunken pant. After a few moments his fingers loosen, and Kame frees himself, tucking Jin’s arm underneath the duvet and pulling it up around his shoulders. Then he crosses to the armchair by the window and sits down, curling up sideways in the plush upholstery. He watches Jin for a while longer, just to make sure he’s really alright, and then he lets his eyes fall closed and rests his cheek against the backrest, hoping to catch at least a few hours’ sleep. He’s confident that he’s close enough to hear if anything happens. As long as he’s in earshot it’s alright. He’ll be here if Jin needs him.  
  
*      *      *  
  
Kame wakes almost immediately when he hears Jin stirring. He’s not even sure he’s actually been asleep, just dozing beneath the surface of consciousness off and on throughout the night, never fully unaware of the backrest pressed awkwardly against his shoulder, his lungs not quite able to take a full breath under the curve of his spine.  
  
He sits very still as he watches Jin wriggling slowly underneath the covers. His arms appear above the duvet as he stretches them over his head, elbow bumping against the headboard, rolls over onto his stomach and smushes his face into the pillow again. After a couple of beats, Jin’s eyes fall open blurrily, and Kame doesn’t breathe.  
  
It’s just a flicker, but he sees it. Sees Jin’s eyes go slightly wider as he notices him. Remembers, maybe. Or wonders. But suddenly Jin is very still too.  
  
“Hi,” Jin says. Kame can’t tell what he’s thinking. But he’s not leaping out of bed and accusing Kame of trespassing, so he supposes that’s something.  
  
“Hi,” Kame says back. “Are you feeling okay?”  
  
Jin nods against the pillow. “Fine,” he says, though the weight of his blink seems to belie that answer. He couldn’t be completely fine, not after that.  
  
“Good,” Kame says anyway, and thinks maybe he should leave. Jin’s not in any danger now, and despite strange occurrences and drunken midnight whispers, they’re really not friends anymore. It’s a bit weird for him to still be here. It’s a bit weird for him to be here at all.  
  
“Do you want—” Kame starts. “I could make you some toast, if you’re still feeling…or I could just get out of your hair.”  
  
“Toast would be good,” Jin says, still looking at Kame in that strange quiet way, like he’s not sure whether he’s really there or Jin’s just sitting alone in his bedroom talking to himself. “I should take a shower.”  
  
 _Perfect_ , Kame thinks, because he needs a little bit of time to get his head together while he’s actually conscious and Jin is sober and not trying to blow him. He wonders if Jin is thinking the same thing. That’s assuming he can even remember enough fragments of the night to piece together his own confusion. “That’s fine,” he says. “I’ll have it ready when you get out.”  
  
“Thanks,” Jin says.  
  
They sit there for another moment before Kame remembers he’s just said he was going to do something. Belatedly, he unfolds his legs from the chair, only wobbling a little bit as he gets to his feet and reminds his knees how to not be bent. His eyes flick over Jin’s face once more, but they don’t linger. Jin hasn’t moved yet. “I’ll just be in the kitchen,” Kame mumbles unnecessarily. And then he totters out of the room.  
  
It takes him a few minutes to find the toaster and another few minutes to find the bread. He’s not sure how accurate Jin’s toaster is, so he starts it out on a low-ish setting just in case. Then he busies himself digging around in Jin’s refrigerator and comes up with a jar of mayonnaise and some kind of spray cheese, but no butter or margarine. Most of the containers are full of leftover takeout, but eventually he identifies a small, sticky jar of some kind of mixed-fruit jam, which he figures will have to do. He’s just putting on a pot of strong coffee when the toaster pops. Too light. He’ll push it back down once he finishes measuring the coffee.  
  
He doesn’t listen for the shower, but he hears it when it stops. He doesn’t listen for footsteps padding across the bedroom carpet or drawers sliding in and out. When the shower has been turned off for a couple of minutes at least, he pushes the toast down for another round.  
  
When the bedroom door opens, Kame nearly burns his fingers on the toaster, drops the piece of toast he’s retrieving quickly on the plate. He fusses over his hand, not looking over as he hears Jin cross the room, take a seat at the dining table. Kame plucks out the last piece of toast and goes to put the plate on the table. Jin looks at it, not at Kame, and Kame takes the opportunity to sneak a glance at him from underneath his bangs.  
  
 _Do you still hate me?_ he thinks. But he doesn’t say it.  
  
“I made coffee too,” Kame says. “Do you want any?”  
  
Jin nods, still staring at the toast, either thoughtful or dazed.  
  
Kame pours a mug for each of them, set’s Jin’s down in front of him just as Jin is reaching for one of the pieces of toast, and the little jar of fruit jam. Kame sits down across from him, wraps his hands around his own mug and stares at it, blowing tiny ripples onto the dark surface.  
  
“So…” Kame begins, reminding himself not to hunch like a naughty child as he looks over at Jin, “you remember, right?” He’s pretty sure, because if he didn’t this would probably feel different. Not not-awkward, just…different.  
  
Jin nods, but doesn’t look up at him. Kame’s not sure if he wants him to or not.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Jin says.  
  
“It’s okay,” Kame replies automatically. And then he kicks himself, because what is he even saying?  _Kame_  should be the one apologizing…probably…  
  
“I didn’t get any on you, did I?” Jin says with a sheepish grimace, and for a moment Kame is even more confused, because what? It was Kame’s—oh. Oh. He means that.  
  
Kame shakes his head quickly. “No,” he says. “You made it in time. It’s all taken care of.”  
  
Jin looks a little relieved. But only a little.  
  
“But—about the other thing,” Kame says, and he thinks Jin stills for a moment. “You…remember that too, right?”  
  
This time Jin does look up, and it’s that strange look again, like he’s not sure if Kame is really there. He smiles a little, and that’s strange too, because it’s the last thing Kame would have expected, and Kame feels a bit like he’s being left out of a joke. Not a mean one though. “Yeah,” he says. “I remember.”  
  
Kame watches as Jin opens the little jar and starts spreading a thin layer of the dark purple-ish substance on his toast.  
  
“I’m…sorry. About that,” Kame says belatedly, and it feels weird. Because it sounded right in his head. He’s not sure why it sounds wrong out loud.  
  
Maybe it’s the way Jin falters, too focused on his breakfast. “About what?”  
  
“That whole—I mean, you were really drunk, and I shouldn’t have let you…I knew better. It was wrong of me.”  
  
Jin keeps spreading jam on his toast, shrugs lightly, his shoulders relaxing again. “I’m not sorry. I wanted to.”  
  
Kame’s coffee cup pauses halfway to his lips. Suddenly he’s back in the Twilight Zone again. Only Jin’s not drunk anymore, he’s showered and dressed and sitting there eating toast with jam, and he’s still saying the same thing he was saying last night. The same thing that doesn’t make sense.  
  
“You…what?”  
  
“I wanted to,” he repeats. “I’ve wanted to do that for a long time. I mean, without the hurling my guts out part afterward, but basically, yeah. Is that…is that okay? Are you okay?”  
  
Kame is too stuck on the first half of what Jin’s just said to do more than nod vaguely at the second. Since when does Jin do that? Not just with Kame, but with anybody?  
  
“I’ve missed you,” Jin says, apparently taking advantage of Kame’s verbal incapacitation to deliver another quiet bodyblow.  
  
“I’ve missed you too,” Kame says. It’s out before he can even consider whether or not it’s a good idea. It’s true, but not all true things are meant to be said out loud. There are a lot of things Kame hasn’t said out loud, but he’s always thought there was a good reason for that. Now he doesn’t know what to think anymore. Because Jin wanted to. For a long time.  
  
Kame takes a sip of his coffee, and it feels a little less strange. A little less like he’s just slipped into an alternate universe and more like maybe something good is happening. Maybe something good has happened. The apartment is warm and cozy, and Jin’s not kicking him out, and he doesn’t seem mad at all. A little embarrassed maybe, but not about that. He wanted to. He said so. And Jin is sneaking little glances at him over his second piece of toast, and for the first time Kame realizes what that strange look is. Jin’s glad that Kame’s here. That Kame’s not walking out. That Kame stayed with him all night, and Kame made him toast.  
  
Jin missed him.  
  
“Your whole face changes when you smile, you know that?”  
  
Kame blinks—he hasn’t even noticed he’s been smiling. Jin grins at him sneakily, and Kame arches an eyebrow. “How so?”  
  
“I don’t know. Just something. Makes you look all fluffy and cute.”  
  
“Like a dog?” Kame suggests drily, and Jin gives him an odd look. Then he blinks again, frowning in at himself, and Kame things maybe the bell is ringing.  
  
“…Right,” Jin mumbles. “Uh, sorry about that.”  
  
But Kame’s not annoyed anymore.  
  
Jin polishes off the last bite of his first piece and reaches for the second, spreading the jam in even little strokes. He nudges around the lumpy bits so they don’t end up all clumped together in one spot.  
  
“So…when you say ‘a long time,’” Kame hedges, “like how long are we talking about here?”  
  
Jin grins a little bit around a mouthful of toast. “A long time,” he says. “Probably longer than I realized.”  
  
“More than a year?”  
  
Jin nods, inspecting his toast and choosing his next angle of attack.  
  
“More than five?”  
  
At this, Jin hesitates, glancing up at the ceiling for a moment. Then he shakes his head and resumes chewing. “Probably not quite that long,” he says as he swallows. “At least not consciously. But long enough.”  
  
“I thought you were straight.” It comes out more bluntly than he means it to, but he can’t help it. It’s the elephant in the room.  
  
Jin glances up at him for a moment. Then he returns his attention to his toast. “So did I,” he says with a shrug. “Maybe I am. What difference does it make? I like women. I like you. I feel things when I think about you, not exactly like with women, but not exactly like with anybody. And there’s only one person in my life that I’d cross an ocean to see, even though he’s a stubborn control freak with a pathological need to put labels on everything. That’s all I know.”  
  
Kame ponders this for a while. He thinks it’s a bit rich for Jin to accuse him of being a control freak when Jin’s the one who’s been chomping at the company bit for the last decade, but he doesn’t say that. He remembers the photograph at the party, Jin with that big dorky smile under ghostly hair, and a skinny arm divested of its owner. Body shots and awkward hellos and distance. Barbarians at the gates. It doesn’t make him angry now, but it makes him tired. His back aches from being bent up all night and he wonders how many times they’ll go around the circle if he lets them. Thirteen years of boom and bust, secret grins and long, heavy silences.  
  
“I was really pissed off when you left.” His voice is quiet, just stating a fact. He’s looking past Jin, but he sees him anyway.  
  
Jin nods contritely, swallowing a mouthful of breakfast. “I know.”  
  
“Do you know why?”  
  
A puzzled little crease appears between Jin’s brows, and Kame takes that as a “no.”  
  
“Because you didn’t even bother to tell us. You didn’t bother to tell  _me_. Things had been bad for a while, but that—” His voice catches and he takes a breath. He wants to get it out, but he doesn’t want to be angry. It just needs to be said. “That really sucked.”  
  
Jin is silent for a moment.  
  
“I’m sorry.”  
  
It’s only what’s to be expected, but Kame is surprised how good it is to hear.  
  
“I was…sort of going through some stuff.”  
  
“What stuff?” Kame asks.  
  
Jin waves a hand awkwardly between them. “This stuff,” he says. “You and me stuff. And I couldn’t tell you. I could barely speak to you.”  
  
“Because of…this?” Kame repeats, copying Jin’s gesture.  
  
Jin nods. “It just sort of snuck up on me, and I didn’t know what to do with it. I mean, I’ve only ever been with women, and I never really thought about—and we’ve been friends for such a long time, but even then things were a little…strange. And I didn’t know what you were thinking, but I figured if you’d been thinking anything I would have known about it by then. But then again, you thought I was straight, so…I mean,  _I_  thought I was straight.”  
  
Kame nods along a little bemusedly, trying to keep up with Jin’s train of thought, such as it is. “Yeah. Well, I can see where that would be confusing. But you still should have sucked it up and at least told me you were leaving before I got called into a meeting with Johnny about whether or not we were going to bother carrying on without you.”  
  
“I know,” Jin says. “And I’m sorry. Really. I handled that whole thing badly.”  
  
“Yeah,” Kame says. “Well…don’t do it again.”  
  
Jin laughs a little—then darts a look at Kame, just to make sure it was a joke. It was.  
  
“I won’t,” he agrees. He smiles, but his eyes are serious.  
  
There’s one piece of toast left on the plate, and Jin pushes it toward Kame. “Do you want it?” he asks, indicating the half-eaten piece in his hand. “I’ve had plenty.”  
  
Kame only hesitates a little before accepting, reaching for the jam and spreading a little on one corner to taste. It’s an odd mixture of flavors, slightly bittersweet, but good. When it goes down well with the coffee, he reaches for the knife again and spreads jam on the rest of the slice.  
  
They sit in silence for a few moments, both munching away, sneaking glances at each other across the table. Kame wonders what time it is, because he has to be in the studio this afternoon and he wants to shower and change before then, but it can’t be that late yet. He doesn’t want to leave quite yet.  
  
His gaze falls on the picture frame still sitting against the wall by the floor, right where they left it last night. The mess is gone, but the glass will still need to be replaced.  
  
“So…” Jin says, and Kame glances over to find him fingering the edge of his empty plate, turning it bit by bit in a slow circle. “What happens now?”  
  
Kame blinks.  _You’re asking me?_  he thinks, because that seems preposterous. Because Jin’s the one with the plans here. Jin’s the one trying to conquer America, and Jin’s the one who missed him, and Jin’s the one who’s been wanting this, and Jin’s the one who came back. To see him.  
  
And maybe that’s why he’s asking.  
  
“I don’t know,” he says, because it’s the truth. Jin’s clearly had a lot more time to think about this than he has. Kame has spent years specifically not thinking about this. “What do you want to happen?”  
  
“I want to be with you,” Jin says, and there’s a little splash of color on his cheeks that belies his confidence. “But…I know that’s—I mean, I don’t even know if you—”  
  
“I want that,” Kame says, stopping him before he can lose himself in another paragraph. Because that’s the truth too. “But, aren’t you—”  
  
“I’ll be here for a while,” Jin says, reading his mind, sounding a little bit perkier all of a sudden. “At least six months, I think. And I’ll be back, I mean, when I leave again. And I won’t…I won’t disappear again. I promise. I’ll tell you things.”  
  
Kame lets out a little breath as he sorts through all of that, through toast and fluffy hair and blow jobs and body shots and missing him, and it’s kind of too much. Because this matters to him, and he never let it matter to him like this before yesterday, and that’s too much. It too much for something that didn’t exist twenty-four hours ago except in some wistful little never-happen drawer in the back of his mind, and it’s too fast.  
  
“Let’s just…take it slow, okay?” Kame says. And it’s right. It feels right. “See how things are. Where it goes.”  
  
Jin nods, and the slightly pinched, serious expression on his face makes Kame want to smile. As it is he reaches over and puts his hand on Jin’s wrist. Jin turns his hand over and starts playing with Kame’s fingers, and Kame seems to remember him doing that sometimes when they were kids. He stopped somewhere along the line. They stopped touching at all, somewhere along the line. Maybe now he knows why.  
  
“Okay,” Jin says. “Okay. That sounds good.”  
  
They sit there together for a few more minutes before getting to their feet and starting to clear away the breakfast dishes. It’s a little bit weird, because it’s sort of familiar, being in close-quarters like this, and sort of an old memory, because they haven’t been like this in a while. And it’s sort of brand new, because they’ve never been like this. Not quite like this.  
  
Kame shrugs into his jacket and Jin walks him to the door, hangs back a bit while Kame puts on his shoes. When Kame straightens again he looks back at Jin, and he gets the feeling Jin sort of wants to kiss him goodbye. But they’re taking it slow, and he doesn’t want to fuck it up.  
  
Kame weighs not fucking it up against the way Jin is nibbling on his lower lip without even realizing it, and decides it’s a risk worth taking.  
  
Jin tastes like jam and coffee, or maybe that’s Kame. He’s a little bit hesitant, nothing like last night, but maybe that’s just because he doesn’t want to push. So Kame pushes a little instead, slides his palm around the back of Jin’s neck and breathes into the kiss, just to tell him it’s alright. And it is. It’s nice. When Kame feels Jin’s fingers playing with the strands of his not-quite-so-fluffy-anymore hair, he smiles. Jin kisses him again, and he doesn’t think he’ll ever get tired of that.  
  
He wonders if this is what grownups do, making out with old friends in the genkan after toast and sex and awkwardness. Old friends who aren’t friends anymore but might be something else, if they’re careful. And then he decides he doesn’t care, because it feels good. Jin feels good. Jin wants him, and Kame likes it. And he doesn’t care if it hurts.  
  
“I’d better go,” Kame says, easing back at last, and his voice is a little bit of a croak. Hopefully it will be better by the time he gets to the studio.  
  
“Okay,” Jin nods solemnly, squeezing Kame’s arms briefly before letting him go.  
  
“But I’ll be back.”  
  
Jin grins and nods again. “Okay. I’ll be waiting.”  
  
There’s another little kiss, and he’s not sure which one of them snuck it, but he doesn’t mind. It stays with him as he turns away, opens the door and doesn’t look back. Because he’s got places to be, and they’re taking it slow, and Jin came back. For him.  
  
When he steps out into the hallway, Kame knows he’s smiling.


End file.
